


Sometimes, Ryan Dreams

by YaBoyTwoHats



Series: Reinvent Love [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco, The Young Veins
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Disordered Eating but not an ED Ryan just get's high and forgets to eat sometimes, Dreaming, Drug Use, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Marijuana, Open to Interpretation, Post-Split, Sad Ending, Sad with a Happy Ending, The ending isn't entirely clear okay, but you can decide, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 19:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15298536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YaBoyTwoHats/pseuds/YaBoyTwoHats
Summary: Sometimes, Ryan dreams.





	Sometimes, Ryan Dreams

Sometimes, Ryan dreamed. Those days, he hardly slept, so when he did dream, it was while wide awake. Zoning out from boredom or, more often, the high from the weed stinking up his home, his room, his breath, gave Ryan all the time in the world he needed to dream and imagine what things would be like if he had made even a slightly different choice in any number of situations. Ryan obsessed over them, every miniscule choice he ever remembered making, and even more terrified of the ones he could never seem to recall. 

Sure, it was normal for most people to wonder whether getting whipped cream on their Starbucks trademark vanilla bean Frappuccino would have made them enjoy their morning more, but Ryan would worry about whether refusing said whipped cream was the reason why he was irritable enough to mouth off to Z and lose the only constant he’d had in his life practically since Panic! His dogs weren’t and could never be a constant- they had been until Keltie made off with Hobo and Ryan didn’t have the energy to fight for his baby because Keltie had a right to be pissed. Had he not gotten drunk and high off his ass that night, had he not followed him back to his bunk in the back of the tour bus, had he not sucked him off just to hear the beautiful moans that made the sounds on stage appear to be mere imitations of the noises of bliss he was emitting and had he not continued fucking around with Brendon to the point that they both knew it was love, he’d still have his dog.

On a more pressing note; he’d still have his band.

Sometimes, Ryan dreamed. He’d dream about Panic! At The Disco, dream about the royalties he continued to make and wonder whether he’d be making more if he’d been able to twist Brendon’s words into something more legible, beautiful. He dreamed and he wonders whether Brendon would have even written songs at all; Ryan could do so much better than those wretched excuses Brendon regularly spewed out to call albums, to call songs. Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met) was a fucking disgrace, a tragedy such as which he had never written about before. Ryan missed writing songs, missed Brendon singing them.

Sometimes, Ryan would forget. He’d forget about Brendon and Panic! and every song he’d ever written for them and for him and he would forget how to breathe. Forget how to eat, remember how to sleep. It was a constant pattern for him, one he usually relaxed into after the first hit of a blunt. Ryan would forget life, forget to live. Most importantly, however, he’d remember to write. Ryan didn’t write very often after The Young Veins. Cape Town was too hard a song. He never wanted to leave Brendon, and Brendon never wanted to leave him. So he wrote, but only when he was out of his mind enough and ready to go, to die. He’d carve words of pleasure and carelessness and only became self-aware when he realized that it wasn’t a pen, it was a scalpel, and the paper he was using to carve into was actually more tan than snow white. His skin.

That never stopped him from writing. 

He enjoyed his self-destructive escapades but was usually disappointed by them in the morning. Ryan remembered how to write and forgot everything else, so how was he supposed to know that rather than carving something meaningful, Ryan was cutting the lyrics to fucking Northern Downpour of all things, tearing up when he remembered how pretty Brendon’s voice had been in that song. 

Brendon. He couldn’t stop thinking about him and it was partially the somewhat-newly christened Sarah Urie’s fault. He knew their marriage was a sham because his relationship with Keltie was too. The only difference was that, obviously, Keltie wasn’t taking advantage of Brendon. His and Brendon’s story was one of the worst. Terribly tragic for all involved. It affected Spencer, Zack, and Jon too, Jon more than the others. Ryan and Brendon were the reason why Pete had kicked the two of them out of the band and onto their backs, Jon angrier than Ryan was about losing his job. Ryan just cried, wishing he could have Brendon back.  


It all started with Keltie. Ryan liked her well enough, but she was just a front because of his homosexuality. The label (Pete) said to get a girlfriend and pretend if you need to because they couldn’t have fans actually thinking Ryan was gay. No, Brendon was the only one that actually got to flaunt anything because he liked both, all. That's what he told Pete anyway. It was a blatant lie, but Brendon was just as good of an actor in real life compared to the one he was on stage. If Ryan didn’t stay with Keltie, they’d kick him out of the band. Ryan supposed it wasn’t fair, but neither was life. He agreed to live with the deal, but Keltie kept pressuring Ryan, saying that the only way she would keep his secret would be if Ryan would have sex with her. He complained to Pete but refused to give details, leading Pete to threaten him with unemployment and Ryan to drag himself to bed with Keltie in despair.

Brendon noticed and had already been suspicious because Ryan had come out to him as soon as Brendon admitted to being attracted to men as long as they were worthy of what Brendon had to offer (Ryan had laughed uproariously at that last part.) Ryan admitted to being blackmailed after being stuffed with booze and joints, and after twenty minutes of arguing about going to the police, Brendon had a better idea.

“Would it make you feel better if I cleaned you out? So that she wasn’t the last person you’d had touch you intimately? If you think that’s weird, I’ll understand, but I figure it couldn’t hurt to offer.” Ryan understood immediately, accepted nearly as quickly too. Ashamed to admit it, Ryan had had a crush on Brendon for as long as he had known him, shying away from Brendon’s stage affections only because he didn’t want to be tempted to reciprocate. Now, with the worst having already happened, Ryan kissed Brendon hard and slowed down until they were languidly losing their clothing, happily lapping at the other’s skin, and Brendon fucked him slow and gentle until they both came with sobs of pleasure.

This continued and after three months, they admitted their affair to Jon and Spencer, who in turn admitted their own. Brendon and Ryan slowly fell in love over double dates and interviews, confessing it to each other the day they got caught. Under the covers with secondhand lovers.

Keltie released a statement breaking up with Ryan the next day, claiming his blatant homosexuality was the issue at hand and that Brendon was the one Ryan was off gallivanting with in the sheets instead of her. Ryan wished that were true.

Pete fired Ryan as soon as the statement was issued, firing Jon too to make it look like a thought out decision. Jon punched a wall the first night after their split and the two of them cried themselves to sleep in each other’s embrace. They lost all contact with the rest of their old band. Jon lost a boyfriend and Ryan lost the love of his life.

So, sometimes, Ryan thought about what would have happened had he not gotten caught.

It was stupid of him to do so, really, as there was nothing he could change, but he dreamed. He dreamed of one day Pete allowing Ryan and Brendon to come out as gay together, dreamed of slipping a ring on Brendon’s fourth finger and kissing him after murmuring I do. All of these things, he’d dreamed of, but none of them he’d received. All of his life was certainly not a dream.

Ryan blinked for the first time in nearly an hour. He had been daydreaming, again. It pissed him off to no end but whatever, Ryan was bored and high. It was expected of him. 

Noiselessly, he picked up his phone. Remarkable though it was, he had no notifications on Twitter about Brendon or Ryden at all. He had long since muted the word Keltie. He stretched, blinking rapidly and typing in a username into the search bar. @BrendonUrie. Hitting the circular button with a plus sign inside, he started to type furiously for a total of three seconds. 

“@BrendonUrie I still love you. Always have, always will. Say hi to Spin for me, gorgeous," the tweet read.  


Twitter blew up when he sent it. He hadn’t been trending for years, and there he was with the number one place. Desperate fans begged for Brendon to respond. Ryan hoped, that when he did, the response would be ecstatic. He hoped, for one, that Brendon would invite him back, take him back. Sarah was just a friend. He hoped Brendon would love him too.

Ryan dreamed. But.

This.

Is not.

That dream.

Brendon replied.

“@ThisIsRyanRoss this is hard, crazy, angry, sweaty, monstrous fucking.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please say someone caught the "passionate kiss" references at the end I'm-


End file.
